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Research & Development

Bonfiglioli’s global research and development create breakthrough solutions that integrate the most advanced mechanical, electrical and hydraulic technologies. They meet the most demanding application requirements and support our customers’ growth.

More than 200 employees around the world are involved in the group’s research and development.

Design simulation

Gear train, thermal and structural simulation

Bonfiglioli’s R&D uses the most advanced virtual simulation techniques to design and optimize its products. This ensures that the performance and the reliability targets are met before building physical prototypes. It reduces time to market and provides clients with the best possible experience.

Each gearbox, motor and inverter combines the fundamentals of classical mechanics, electromechanical and electronics with the most advanced calculation and simulation systems.

The wide variety of potential applications for each Bonfiglioli product continuously poses new challenges. This includes static and dynamic problems of a non-linear nature, such as vibrations and irregular noise that inevitably occur during operation. For motor control, this often requires dedicated characterization and modeling of the electric machine and the target motion profile to optimize the open- or closed-loop electronic control.

Since the gears are the key transmission element for all our products, Bonfiglioli places its initial focus and commitment on them to maximize performance and improve efficiency.

Bonfiglioli believes that low noise is of the utmost importance, so the company thoroughly investigates and assesses it during each gearbox’s planning and development stage. Optimization of the gear tooth profile reduces meshing noise to a minimum and improves efficiency during operation.

Bonfiglioli's technical office uses advanced calculation software and parametric optimization to achieve the best compromise between high cog resistance and low noise, whatever the operating conditions.

This is why Bonfiglioli’s products are optimized at the design stage to identify potential critical conditions. Focused structural solutions are used to prevent them from affecting the machine’s operation.

By simultaneously considering static and dynamic issues, Bonfiglioli can offer a technically advanced product that ensures regularity in the transmission, absence of vibration and noise control based on accurate qualitative and quantitative sound emission appraisal models.

Finite Element Analysis is performed on each of our products at the development stage. This allows the structural behavior of the entire system to be assessed in detail. Right from the initial design stage, it is possible to create a size- and weight-optimized structure while simultaneously ensuring top-quality performance.

Satisfying the customer’s every need has been the driving force in design over the years. Fluid dynamics studies are increasingly requested for our products.

With mechanical and electrical performance optimization, Bonfiglioli focuses on the performance and reliability of electronic controls. According to international standards and internal high severity standards, including certified functional safety, dedicated teams of experts work on the development, industrialization and production of Bonfiglioli inverters and servo drives.

A dedicated R&D team for advanced digital communications ensures the availability of all the main Ethernet industrial field buses on our inverters and servo drives. They also provide the latest technologies to satisfy Industry 4.0 requirements, including OPC-UA and encryption security.

With many years of experience in designing and manufacturing AC induction and PM brushless electric motors and electrical drives for both industrial applications and motion control, Bonfiglioli can use the most advanced design and simulation techniques. They are based on closed-loop simulations between an electromagnetic FEM and a lumped parameter thermal network. The power losses at specified input temperatures calculated by FEM are used to determine the working temperatures until the convergence between the calculated and specified temperatures is reached. In this way, it is possible to analyze the dynamic and thermal behavior in both steady and transient applications.

Specific expertise and equipment for hardware-in-the-loop simulation allow us to easily replicate even the behavior of very complex physical systems and electric machines. We tune and optimize electronic control performance through high-level algorithms before activating a fully embedded hardware/firmware development.

Co-Engineering

We support our customers' projects from beginning to end.

At Bonfiglioli, we believe that product development relies on passion, efficient processes, and the ability to understand our customers' needs accurately.

From the development phase to prototype manufacturing and testing, Bonfiglioli follows a clear process, that comply with worldwide APQP standards.

Our experience with a wide range of applications allows us to quickly develop a proposal and precisely evaluate the development process required.

Through dedicated calculation tools, we can simulate the transmission's capabilities and performance allowing reducing development time.

The alignment phase allows us then to adapt our proposal according to key factors of performance, installation and maintenance.

Once the prototype is ready, Bonfiglioli test it in near real-life operating conditions to verify performance, robustness and efficiency one more time before delivering to the customer.

In high-performance industrial machinery, the key to success is often the ability to customize the inverter characteristics and motion control behavior to the machine specifications, in order to maximize productivity, efficiency and reliability. In other words: fast machine cycles, best energy usage, zero unexpected downtimes.

Through a deep technical interaction with the customer, followed by modeling and combined testing techniques at the hardware, software, mechanical, thermal end electromagnetic compatibility level, Bonfiglioli can provide outstanding results, clearly measurable through the customer’s machine KPIs.

Once Bonfiglioli products are installed and working in the field, our engineers continue to support the customers through data collection and product performance follow-up while the machine is in operation.

Test centers, process

The test centers at Bonfiglioli

Bonfiglioli’s test laboratories develop, certify and perform production follow-up for the solutions designed and manufactured in our plants across the world.
Our specialists are true partners to the R&D, technical and quality departments. They help validate each Bonfiglioli product from the smallest critical component to the overall solution.
The test centers regularly conduct additional tests to ensure gearbox durability and confirm the specifications declared during the official approval stage.

The technology we use

Our various test laboratories provide a wide range of equipment and experience for electrical, mechanical, climactic and functional testing in low and medium voltage, control, safety and measurement. They precisely simulate the applications and scenarios our gearboxes, hydraulic motors, electric motors, inverters and other components are used in.

At Bonfiglioli, we have benches for all dimensions, and the power and speed for monitored testing in induced environmental conditions to measure temperature, vibration and noise.

For electric motors, our benches comply with international standards for product certification. We can control the system operating parameters in performance tests and prolonged stress tests.
For component testing, we have a series of laboratory instruments for analyzing lubricants, bearings and seals.
For inverters and servo drives, we have dedicated motor/drive test benches for performance and endurance tests, as well as facilities for environmental tests (temperature, humidity, vibrations), and for a wide range of electrical tests and measurements, including electrical safety and electromagnetic immunity/emission tests.

Metal laboratory

Our metallurgical laboratories check the suitability of chemical compositions for project materials, as well as surface heat treatments and metallographic structure. These tests are performed for continuous verification of production conformity and for failure analysis during the development phase and after-sales services.